186 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
orous appetite being easy to satisfy, be profits by this easy way of 
getting a good living, to amass during the autumn large provisions 
of that hair grease with which pharmacians prepare that precious 
cosmetic so well known in the fashionable Parisian world as the 
Pommade du lion. Prodigy of chemistry ! And they have actu- 
ally so far abused the ingenuous simplicity of the bald man, as to 
make him believe that the king of animals owes his flowing mane 
and thick robe only to the daily use of the said cosmetic. 
It is known that the bear, once having completed his provision 
of fat, withdraws himself to a den, Avhere he passes the two worst 
months of the year asleep. Fabulists and historians may say what 
they please, this is not the character of a beast hostile to man — a 
beast which slumbers during the season of misery and crime, and 
which prefers honey, sorbs, and olives to a quarter of kid. The 
bear is a savage animal, I admit, but it is certainly one of the most 
inoffensive carnivora that can be met with. I speak of the civilized 
bear, of the French bear, of the bear of the Pyrenees and the 
Alps. I pass over intentionally the grizzly bear of North America, 
and the white bear of the Poles. 
As the emblem of the Savage, the bear is of all the great 
ferae, the one which should suffer most from the loss of his 
liberty. It is true, the bear is in fact the most diflicult to keep 
of all captives ; he grows tame, but without ever abdicating his 
personality or his rights. He has been seen to exercise the trade 
of a juggler in order to gain his living ; but the master knows not 
the tribulation and the remorse which the conscience of his degra- 
dation costs his slave, and how much philosophy is needed to 
grind in silence the bit of servitude. More than one bear has been 
seen, after having broken his chain, prelude to the exercise of his 
reconquered liberty, by the destruction of his keeper and of all his 
family. I have also read, in histories of popular insurrection and 
vengeance, facts which were not without analogy with these re- 
volts of the bear. When the bear is not occupied with eating or 
sleeping, he meditates an escape. All the springs of his imagina- 
tion are stretched toward this aim ; his perpetual agitation tells the 
torments which devour him. That head, whose monotonous and 
regular movement, coming and going, fatigues you, is the pendu- 
